Ian Hamilton

What did you find most encouraging?
This has been a great decade. A special is that rarest of books, a self-published success. It is 'Auld Claes an' Porridge' by Mhairi Livingstone Ross. This is no kailyairder. This is a mythbuster. Judge not by me alone. In five months it has sold 600 copies. No publisher's machinery helped it. Its representative is word of mouth. It's gathering sale on line. This book will sell forever.
     The author is a retired schoolteacher, university graduate, the lot. Her 91-year-old proud mother is none of these things. There was no school for her after primary. At 13 she went into 'Service' to be a domestic servant when she had a mind as bright and wonderful as a child who asks 'WHY?' Today she is learned even if she has been deaf from childhood. There was no doctor to treat her. For a child needing hospital the ambulance was her father’s shoulder. Then a long walk. Survival was a gamble. Children died not just of illness but from hunger. The terrible epitaph for a child 'DOA' was only for the ones who reached help. The rest? They just died. These were our own people. These were the farm workers in the first half of last century...in my own lifetime.
     This family story is told without anger. The anger is all mine. The dedications of Mhairi's book say it all:
     To...'Molly...my matchless Mum.' And to... 'Johnny my adored, gentle and loving Dad.'
     To such as these my resolve to change things seems something very little but utterly inescapable. My anger flows for that gentle still.

What did you find most discouraging?
That the lassie said 'yes' to the Laird O Cockpen and his Progeny became MSPs:

Our MSPs
Some stand on ae leg, whiles some stand on twae legs and some stand on nae legs at a' man.
But their minds are ta'en up wi affairs o the State as their granny was bairned on the straw, man.
For the lassie said 'yes' and syn Cockpen went ben and fair tousled his bride in the manger.
If only yon lass kept her hand on her ass we'd hae non o yon gits in the Chamber.

There is not one of our MSPs who advocates unarmed revolt for our stolen riches such as oil. It would feed the third of our children who live in poverty. Instead they contentedly administer tiny portfolios from Mondeo cars. What has happened to us? You can't take oil from a hostile nation. Are there no people left who would fight for the rights of our hungry children? This decade would discourage a saint or a patriot had there been one among us.

Which public figure did you most admire?
Hugh Andrew of Birlinn the publishers. He's a big man and with every stride he gives out a new idea. With the next one he contradicts it. Both ideas are interesting so those who keep up with him get a university education. A country without an active publishing house is a mute country. Hugh publishes three or four mainly Scottish books a week. As our newspapers die he is Scotland's voice. He has also published special editions of some of the best books ever to see light in Edinburgh. There is a huge Tam o Shanter illustrated by his old dead friend Goudie. Occasionally he misses a book like Mhairi Ross's 'Auld Claes an' Porridge' but he was inventing the steam engine that day. A hundred years ago Edinburgh was the publishing centre of the world. Hugh Andrew is bringing that title back home. He's the only Liberal who believes in independence from England. On some disputed barricade Hugh Andrew and I will die together.

Which public figure did you least admire?
President Obama. He destroyed our hopes at Copenhagen and in Afghanistan. He will continue America's military and commercial imperialist policy until civilisation is dead. Already they have destroyed the world financial system. There is no sign that Obama is anything other than a puppet of the rich. The American dream was a game of monopoly. The people lost.